Thursday 17th May 2018
Posted: Thu 17 May, 2018 7:30 am
Morning
Morning.HindleA wrote:Morning
Worries about an early election?PaulfromYorkshire wrote:The Mail front page (as read on the news stand) this morning is hateful.
Presumably Diane Abbott gave a speech yesterday on Labour's immigration policy?
I'm assuming that people who chunter on about the "envy of the world" that is the NHS - a phrase which nobody ever uses apart from gobshite free marketeers - will ignore this.Patients have been “put at serious risk of harm” by the failure of a £330m outsourcing exercise which NHS England contracted to the private firm Capita in a bid to cut costs, the National Audit Office has warned.
Women were dropped from national cervical cancer screening programmes and medical records and supplies have gone undelivered because of NHS England’s “deeply unsatisfactory” contract, it said in a report.
Apprenticeship starts continue to plummet
The drop in apprenticeship starts since the introduction of the levy is getting even more severe, the latest government statistics reveal.
In February 2018 there were 21,800 apprenticeship starts – down by 40 per cent from the 36,400 starts in February 2017 reported at this point last year.
This was also a failure of *some* New Labour thinking.RogerOThornhill wrote:While I recognise that not everything in the NHS is perfect, and that all failings should be fully investigated and people dealt with properly; the answer isn't simply to look at everything and assume that it would be far better if it is was outsourced.
Openness, transparency, admitting fault, learning from mistakes is the only way to improve.
Quite - "public sector reform" is a phrase that should ring alarm bells every time it's used.AnatolyKasparov wrote:This was also a failure of *some* New Labour thinking.RogerOThornhill wrote:While I recognise that not everything in the NHS is perfect, and that all failings should be fully investigated and people dealt with properly; the answer isn't simply to look at everything and assume that it would be far better if it is was outsourced.
Openness, transparency, admitting fault, learning from mistakes is the only way to improve.
This is something I was definitely wrong about back then.RogerOThornhill wrote:Quite - "public sector reform" is a phrase that should ring alarm bells every time it's used.AnatolyKasparov wrote:This was also a failure of *some* New Labour thinking.RogerOThornhill wrote:While I recognise that not everything in the NHS is perfect, and that all failings should be fully investigated and people dealt with properly; the answer isn't simply to look at everything and assume that it would be far better if it is was outsourced.
Openness, transparency, admitting fault, learning from mistakes is the only way to improve.
True. Thankfully, we now seem to be passing the phase (which lasted far too long and risked taking permanent hold) where people were too nervous of criticising the NHS for fear of any criticism being seen as a sign of tacit support for outsourcing.RogerOThornhill wrote:While I recognise that not everything in the NHS is perfect, and that all failings should be fully investigated and people dealt with properly; the answer isn't simply to look at everything and assume that it would be far better if it is was outsourced.
Openness, transparency, admitting fault, learning from mistakes is the only way to improve.
I don't think it had to be, but yes in practice it all too often was.PaulfromYorkshire wrote:This is something I was definitely wrong about back then.RogerOThornhill wrote:Quite - "public sector reform" is a phrase that should ring alarm bells every time it's used.AnatolyKasparov wrote:This was also a failure of *some* New Labour thinking.
People used to say "it's a slippery slope" when New Labour started this stuff. They were right!
What were they hoping to achieve by this - results so they could point to overseas students and say "See, no-one likes you here. Bugger off back to where you came from!"The survey invites students to express attitudes about international students as if that was a real thing. International students are not a homogenous group. In my long experience as an academic working with students from the UK and from other countries, I’ve worked with great international students, weak international students, rewarding ones, challenging ones, funny ones, brilliant ones, angry ones, sad ones, friendly ones, introverted ones…. Pretty much exactly the same list as I would generate about UK home students. International students come from a huge range of backgrounds, they are as diverse, complex, and exciting to work with as UK based students are. Why would they not be?
Roger it wasn't those Australian, European, North American students they meant. Nudge nudge, wink wink.RogerOThornhill wrote:This is hardly surprising but really, really bad...
HOME OFFICE: IT IS NOT OK TO ASK OUR STUDENTS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF ‘INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS’ ON THEIR EXPERIENCE OF UNIVERSITY LIFE
https://janeemcallaghan.wordpress.com/2 ... sity-life/
What were they hoping to achieve by this - results so they could point to overseas students and say "See, no-one likes you here. Bugger off back to where you came from!"The survey invites students to express attitudes about international students as if that was a real thing. International students are not a homogenous group. In my long experience as an academic working with students from the UK and from other countries, I’ve worked with great international students, weak international students, rewarding ones, challenging ones, funny ones, brilliant ones, angry ones, sad ones, friendly ones, introverted ones…. Pretty much exactly the same list as I would generate about UK home students. International students come from a huge range of backgrounds, they are as diverse, complex, and exciting to work with as UK based students are. Why would they not be?
I have friends from Australia, Italy, USA, Netherlands, Canada, Japan, Greece and more - all of whom have added so much to their respective universities.
Connaught in the RoI, no less. Maybe this could be a veiled hint of some kind, Brenda can be quite good at those......adam wrote:It would appear, no doubt in an attempt to not make things any more complicated than they already are with the Republic, that the Queen is considering making her grandson and grand-daughter in law-about-to-be the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.
With some very specific resonance from the past...AnatolyKasparov wrote:Connaught in the RoI, no less. Maybe this could be a veiled hint of some kind, Brenda can be quite good at those......adam wrote:It would appear, no doubt in an attempt to not make things any more complicated than they already are with the Republic, that the Queen is considering making her grandson and grand-daughter in law-about-to-be the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.
The ‘Cromwellian Settlement of 1652’ as it came to be called, was the worst political disaster ever to afflict Ireland and was second only in magnitude to the Great Famine of the 1840s. All Irish owned estates east of the Shannon, which had not hitherto been declared ‘confiscate’ were now ‘planted’. The Irish landowners were evicted en masse and were ordered to cross the Shannon by a certain date or face death. The only people allowed to remain east of the Shannon were those who could prove that they had been faithful to the parliamentary cause. The mass exodus westwards was a sad sight and the order “To Hell or to Connacht” became the regular heart-rending cry throughout the other three provinces.
Just done, ta.PaulfromYorkshire wrote:What's more it seems anyone can complete it! Unless it knows I'm currently sitting in a Uni.
http://www.homeofficesurveys.homeoffice ... lStudents/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It's nearly three o'clock in the afternoon and I require a baked good and a cup of something hot. Apologies for having to ask outright. What might be the message, please?adam wrote:With some very specific resonance from the past...AnatolyKasparov wrote:Connaught in the RoI, no less. Maybe this could be a veiled hint of some kind, Brenda can be quite good at those......adam wrote:It would appear, no doubt in an attempt to not make things any more complicated than they already are with the Republic, that the Queen is considering making her grandson and grand-daughter in law-about-to-be the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.The ‘Cromwellian Settlement of 1652’ as it came to be called, was the worst political disaster ever to afflict Ireland and was second only in magnitude to the Great Famine of the 1840s. All Irish owned estates east of the Shannon, which had not hitherto been declared ‘confiscate’ were now ‘planted’. The Irish landowners were evicted en masse and were ordered to cross the Shannon by a certain date or face death. The only people allowed to remain east of the Shannon were those who could prove that they had been faithful to the parliamentary cause. The mass exodus westwards was a sad sight and the order “To Hell or to Connacht” became the regular heart-rending cry throughout the other three provinces.
John Lubbock
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Replying to @spectator
Brendan is the kind of lad who would make a point of never wearing his seatbelt in a car, even if the beeping sound kept playing the whole time he was driving. Because he believes in his freedom to be a prick.
A gentle reminder to HMG that Ireland does exist and it is in our interests to be on good terms with them, maybe?citizenJA wrote:It's nearly three o'clock in the afternoon and I require a baked good and a cup of something hot. Apologies for having to ask outright. What might be the message, please?adam wrote:With some very specific resonance from the past...AnatolyKasparov wrote:Connaught in the RoI, no less. Maybe this could be a veiled hint of some kind, Brenda can be quite good at those......The ‘Cromwellian Settlement of 1652’ as it came to be called, was the worst political disaster ever to afflict Ireland and was second only in magnitude to the Great Famine of the 1840s. All Irish owned estates east of the Shannon, which had not hitherto been declared ‘confiscate’ were now ‘planted’. The Irish landowners were evicted en masse and were ordered to cross the Shannon by a certain date or face death. The only people allowed to remain east of the Shannon were those who could prove that they had been faithful to the parliamentary cause. The mass exodus westwards was a sad sight and the order “To Hell or to Connacht” became the regular heart-rending cry throughout the other three provinces.
To be honest I read it as more of an 'In Your Face Ireland - we starved you, marched you and just plain shot you to death many times over and we can do so again!!!!!" It would be like trying to grease the wheels of a trade deal with india by making Harry the Viceroy of Amritsar.AnatolyKasparov wrote:A gentle reminder to HMG that Ireland does exist and it is in our interests to be on good terms with them, maybe?citizenJA wrote:It's nearly three o'clock in the afternoon and I require a baked good and a cup of something hot. Apologies for having to ask outright. What might be the message, please?
Yeah I get that too - obviously it might not be true at all, I just thought that it was a very very bad idea that was more likely to be read as a dig at Ireland, who would care a lot, than as a dig at our government, who wouldn't care at all.AnatolyKasparov wrote:I realise it can also be read that way. But above all our monarch is a "*small*-c" conservative with all that entails - I never believed for a minute the Currant Bun line that she enthusiastically backed Brexit, and for primarily that reason.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/ ... l-to-laughWodehouse prize for comic fiction withheld after judges fail to laugh
None of the 62 novels submitted for the 2018 award generated ‘unanimous laughter’ among the jury, so the honour will roll over this year (Guardian)
Wonder how many schools out there are going "Gosh, he's right y'know - why didn't we think of that before?"Schools Week
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Agnew now recommending teachers cut down on photocopying and stop using coloured ink to save money #ASCL #BLconf18
Kenneth Baker actually pops up in this article and makes a very good point:Stress and serious anxiety: how the new GCSE is affecting mental health
Among those critics is the Conservative peer Kenneth Baker, who was education secretary between 1985 and 1986 when the first GCSEs were being tested. “When I took the equivalent in 1952, it was before O-levels,” he told a radio show last year. “Ninety-three per cent got a job at 16 when I took the exam. And so they had to clutch in their hands a certificate showing what they’d achieved and that was very important. But now the school leaving age is 18, in effect. Education goes on from four to 18. So what are you testing people at 16 for?”